Swervedriver - High-Octane Shoegaze

Swervedriver aren't the first band you'd come across when deciding to approach shoegaze, or venture beyond the usual two or three genre classics. Unless you lived through the early 90s firsthand, when you might have discovered Franklin and Hartridge's band well before shoegaze's coordinates had been fully mapped out, you usually come to their work with a pretty clear idea of how the "shoe-gazers" are supposed to sound. Listening to Raise or Mezcal Head, the band's two masterpieces, for the first time, you're hit instead by a fierce, pronounced sound, a churning rhythm section with the bass pushed well forward and drums that are downright stormy, and guitars unusually distinct by shoegaze standards.

And yet all the genre's hallmarks are there: the wall of feedback, the forlorn drawl of Adam Franklin and, when called for, Jimmy Hartridge (still beefed up compared to that of Kevin Shields or Andy Bell and Mark Gardener), the decadent, dreamlike atmosphere. There's just a lot more muscle behind it. If we had to compare Swervedriver's shoegaze to an animal, it would surely be the brawny bull that graces the cover of Mezcal Head.

Even the band's name evokes a certain toughness, the ability to leave a mark. "Swerve" means a sudden change of direction, a skid - the kind of maneuver that leaves tangible marks on the ground.

The Oxford band's punchy name, though, is just the first sign of an entire imaginative world to come, one marked by a sense of speed and by the theme of travel, whether on land or in space. Roaring American coupés, ejector seats, roller coasters, aerospace routes, jet trails, rattling trains and distant horizons would go on to populate Swervedriver's six albums to date. All of them symbols that find perfect sonic representation in the English band's high-octane shoegaze, which, after all, they themselves liked to describe early in their career as "space travel rock'n'roll".

The most clattering, rattling strain of space-rock -- the Hawkwind variety, to be precise -- is certainly part of Swervedriver's stock of influences, but it's not the only suspect behind the band's heavier sound compared to shoegaze norms. From the release of their very first EPs, Franklin and Hartridge made no secret, either in music or in words, of their admiration for giants of noisier American indie rock like Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr., and even more so for Sonic Youth. From this angle, it's easy to link the band to another great classic shoegaze name likewise marked by a certain Americanism: Catherine Wheel. Dickinson's band, however, debuted with an album, "Ferment", that was more conventionally shoegaze, and only later "bastardized" its sound with grunge and alternative-metal shadings. Post-hardcore and noise-pop, on the other hand, have been part of Swervedriver's DNA since the very start of their journey. It's also worth noting that the two guitarists' joint musical history began when, together with Franklin's older brother and drummer Paddy Pulzer, they founded a band called Shake Appeal, heavily inspired by the garage rock and proto-punk of Stooges and MC5.

1989 - 1992: the band's first lineup and their arrival at Creation

Immediately after Shake Appeal split up in 1989, Adam Franklin wrote three songs destined to become part of the Swervedriver songbook: "Volcano Trash", "Afterglow" and the band's first single, "Son Of Mustang Ford". Impressed by the quality of the songs, his former bandmates decided to back the guitarist in recording a demo at Union Street Studios in Oxford. Immediately after the sessions, Graham Franklin and Paddy Pulzer parted ways for good with the two guitarists to pursue other musical projects.

Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge, on the other hand, were determined to keep making music together. They left Oxford for London, where they would soon meet Scottish drummer Graham Bonnar, who would remain part of Swervedriver until 1992, branding the band's early work with his forceful, merciless drumming.

Just before leaving Oxford, the future Swervedriver guitarists and singers handed a copy of their demo to fellow Oxford native, Ride guitarist and singer Mark Gardener, who in turn passed the cassette on to Creation boss Alan McGee. It took the visionary head of the most important shoegaze label of all time just a few listens -- reportedly in the back of a limousine in Los Angeles -- to decide to sign the band.

Having roped in bassist Adi Vines (also part of the London scene), as was standard practice at Creation, the band started churning out EPs and gaining radio exposure thanks to various forward-thinking English DJs of the time, John Peel above all. Before folding each of their title tracks (and many of the other tracks, into the extended edition released for the American market) into Raise, the band put out no fewer than three EPs: Son Of Mustang Ford, Rave Down and Reel To Real.

While the English market initially gave Swervedriver's music a very warm welcome, it must be said that interest soon cooled, with press and radio favoring more orthodox shoegaze acts. Unlike more illustrious peers, and similarly to what would later happen to Catherine Wheel, the Oxford band nonetheless received a great deal of attention in the United States, where, aided by a distribution deal with A&M as well as a sound more suited to American ears hungry for grunge, they landed numerous live dates supporting bands as big as Smashing Pumpkins, Monster Magnet and Soundgarden.

Raise is an album that wastes no time on introductions, slow build-ups, or any kind of formality. Propelled by a reckless rhythm section -- Vines and Bonnar really hammer away -- opener "Sci Flyer" launches the record straight into orbit, beyond the celestial vault of its cover art. The Oxford duo's aerospace guitars are no less impressive, weaving smoky trails like supersonic shuttles just blasted off into space. With a title like that, it could hardly be otherwise.

While still decidedly forceful, "Pile Up" starts to show shoegaze symptoms, with vocals that are more muted and lean toward litany; while "Son Of Mustang Ford", a song whose vocals drip with Sonic Youth's legacy, is another full-throttle ride, this time aboard the legendary car of the title through the sun-scorched, hallucinated streets of "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" (the book Franklin himself cited as an influence on the song).

It's the following "Deep Seat" that melts the guitars into a treacle of reverb, plunging the album into a shoegaze space-time warp, before picking the pace back up to accompany a formidable wah-wah-drenched solo. Next comes "Rave Down", an energetic melodic gem that duly turns up on countless best-of compilations of the first shoegaze wave. On "Sunset" the quartet keeps breaking the sound barrier for five minutes of sudden tempo changes, lulls, stillness and sudden sonic assaults.

The crown for the most pop song on the tracklist goes to the following "Feel So Real", a song boasting one of the Franklin-Hartridge duo's most rounded choruses and a guitar dynamic very similar to Ride's. It only lasts a matter of seconds, though, before yet another brutal rhythmic blow and a virulent riff take over, but the brushed drums and arpeggio that open "Sandblasted" seem to echo the moods of another Oxford band that was taking its first breaths in those very years -- one that hardly needs naming.

The album's closer, or at least that of its original version, is "Lead Me Where You Dare", a track that stands apart from the rest of the tracklist due to its subdued yet still magnetic, sinuous, even flirtatious pace, as it gradually strips away its instruments toward the end.

Among the tracks that the US version of the album pulls from the preceding EPs, two are absolutely worth flagging: "Andalusia", a scorching-hot shoegaze shard with a metallic aftertaste, and "Kill The Superheroes", six noisy minutes that seem to be a tribute to Sonic Youth.

Raise allowed the band to reach No. 44 on the UK sales chart, no small feat given how heavy the record is. A long tour followed, during which the band caught the attention of Alan Moulder. A regular at Creation, where he had already worked with Jesus And Mary Chain and MBV, the producer was eager to work with the band.

The result of that meeting, the EP Never Lose That Feeling, is without doubt one of the high points of the band's entire career. The title track "Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn" alone would be enough to secure this extended play's place in glory. Moulder's careful work on the sound is evident from the very friction the riffs seem to generate; the chorus and the explosive force of its message are a pop marvel, reinforced by the Byrds-like counter-melody. But it's in the long second half of the track that the addition of free-jazz saxophone improvisations turns it into an absolute high point of neo-psychedelia as well as shoegaze. Closing out the tracklist, we find "Never Lose That Feeling" again, this time in its radio-edit version, stripped of that miraculous second section.

The two central tracks are also of absolute value: a "Scrawl And Scream" that's lean in its rhythm but hits with blunt noise impact, and a refined reprise of "Hands" (from Raise) titled "Hands [A.K.A. The Watchmakers Hands]".

Despite things going great creatively and commercially, relations between the band members had hit rock bottom due to strong artistic differences. So the 1992 North American tour, their first as headliners overseas, marked the end of Swervedriver's original line-up. While waiting to cross the US-Canada border for a show in Toronto, Bonnar left the tour bus to go grab a sandwich and never came back. Thanks to Dan Davis of Run Westy Run filling in on drums for the next five dates, the band managed to salvage part of the tour, but upon returning home Adi Vines also expressed his wish to leave the band. It was the end of an era.

1993 – 1997: the partnership with Moulder, the new line-up, and the split with Creation

By the time they got back from the United States, then, little remained of Swervedriver. To paraphrase Hartridge himself, all that was left of the band's original line-up was "myself, Franklin, and a few pedals". Though many wrote them off, it never even crossed the minds of the two singer-guitarists to quit. During the recording of Never Lose That Feeling, they had decided that Alan Moulder would produce their next LP, and given how well they got on with the producer, they'd do whatever it took to make it happen.

Jez Hindmarsh, the band's new drummer, was introduced by Hartridge and Franklin to producer Marc Waterman during the recording of "Duress", the first track cut for Mezcal Head; he was thus able to take an active part in making the record. Finding a bassist took a bit longer, so much so that all the bass parts on the band's second LP were recorded, in turns, by the guitarists themselves.

With the record finished, as it was time to set off on a new tour, Steve George approached Franklin at a bar in Camden and said to him: "you're the Swervedriver guy... I heard you're looking for a bassist, I'm available if you need one."

Mezcal Head, on whose sinewy, glossy sound Moulder's imprint is unmistakable, is a very different record from its predecessor. Although the sound remains marked by a heavy dose of reverb and the vocals are still largely delivered in a sing-song drawl, on Mezcal Head the band begins to show its first signs of drifting away from shoegaze: Franklin and Hartridge's riffing is far more pronounced and sharply defined than before, the choruses are much more hymn-like and singalong ("Blowin' Cool", for instance, you can sing along to on first listen), and the rhythm section is, all things considered, alternative-rock through and through.

Aside from the aforementioned "Duress", a highly psychedelic track where the guitars screech and stretch out, warping their own trajectories, the record's pace is very high and, compared to Raise, much steadier. "For Seeking Heat" and "Duel" (inspired by the Spielberg film, yet another nod from the band to cars and roads), which open the album forming almost a single long suite, immediately show off feline claws and agility; while "MM Abduction" flexes the most pumped-up, defined muscle of the bunch.

The album's second single, "Last Train To Satansville", is one of the band's masterpieces: the rhythm is breakneck, giving you the genuine feeling of hurtling along on a runaway train, and the guitars are disorienting, split as they are between spacey shimmer and spaghetti-western echoes.

Streaked with scorching guitars that layer and alternate riffs and arpeggios with inexhaustible imagination, "Harry And Maggie" and "A Change Is Gonna Come" betray reflections on the contradictory nature of relationships, on the ambiguity of feelings, and on the impossibility of always reconciling them. "Girl On A Motorbike" takes us back on the road with lyrics that read like a film script, able to transport us first into desert sand and then into a frontier bar; all while the guitars dart about accompanied by an incessantly tapped piano. As on "Last Train To Satanville", Moulder's skill behind the mixing desk proves crucial here, allowing for a record that's perhaps less cohesive and consistent than its predecessor, but more mutable and, in some ways, more engaging.

Released on 12 August 1993, the album debuted at home at number 55 on the sales chart. A certainly remarkable result, but a hard one to improve on given the kind of sound the band had embraced. By the end of the year, Swervedriver were back in America to support the Smashing Pumpkins tour, thus beginning to focus more heavily on their growing American audience.

Unlike what would be the strategy of Catherine Wheel, who seemed happy enough to accept the "American" shoegaze tag, and despite their distribution and touring efforts overseas, Swervedriver really couldn't stomach that label. So much so that their entire next album, Ejector Seat Reservation from 1995, drawing on influences ranging from Elvis Costello to T. Rex, sounds like an attempt to shake off that description.

Produced once again by Alan Moulder, the Oxford band's third album marks, compared to Mezcal Head, an even more pronounced shift than the one that occurred between that record and Raise, with the typical shoegaze wall of noise appearing only in a handful of tracks, against a far more pronounced psychedelic side and a hitherto unheard-of pop leaning.

The record, very probably (at least at the time of its release) the critics' favourite, was however a total commercial flop. That, combined with strong disagreements that arose during its making with both McGee and A&M (who, following the disputes, first postponed and then cancelled the album's American release), led to the band splitting from both labels. To top off the mess and eat into the band's budget, Bob Dylan also got involved, refusing at the last minute to grant rights to use the lyrics of his "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" in "It's All Happening Now", a bonus track included on an already-pressed promotional version of Ejector Seat Reservation, which therefore had to be scrapped.

A bit chaotic, moody, certainly uneven, Ejector Seat Reservation is undoubtedly a weaker record than the two that preceded it, but it's precisely thanks to these traits that it expanded the band's range of possibilities, and once again yielded some of their finest achievements.

Swervedriver's desire to get back in the game and tear down every stereotype that had built up around their name is evident from the opening two minutes of "Single Finger Salute", practically a slow-motion dive into orchestral-flavored neo-psychedelia. Only a handful of tracks, like "Bring Me The Head Of The Fortune Teller" and the steely, swaggering "I Am Superman", dutifully retread the guitar style and appeal of the songs on Mezcal Head.

Driven by George's sensuous, cavernous bass groove and drumming that almost recalls Oasis, "The Other Jesus" seems almost like an attempt to ride the long wave of britpop that was raging at the time. The title track and "How Does It Feel To Look Like Candy?" - the latter enriched by delicious, dazzling horns - linger further in that direction, enough to bring to mind a parallel with "Carnival Of Light" by fellow Oxford natives Ride, another record that, at least compared to its predecessors, leaned heavily into the era's English trends. Unlike the Ride of "Carnival Of Light", though, Swervedriver remain predominantly electric.

The masterpiece of this timid pop turn is, in all likelihood, the lysergic ballad "Last Day On Earth", whose string flourishes and wah-wah roars inevitably call to mind the band that straddled the line between shoegaze and britpop more comfortably than anyone else: the Verve.

Swervedriver's engines roar back to life on the thunderous "Son Of Jaguar E", which follows in the slipstream of "Son Of Mustang Ford". It's amusing, in this regard, that this time - almost to reinforce their rejection of the aforementioned "Americanness" - the band chose to name this song after a car that stands as the ultimate symbol of the British automotive industry. The last song on the tracklist, "The Birds", kicks off a sequence of three uncredited tracks marked by liquid, dreamlike psychedelia. This brings to a close the most interesting chapter of the band's career.

1998 - 2007: the brief Geffen period and the long hiatus

Without a label but determined not to stop playing and writing new music, Swervedriver sign a three-album deal with BCG Records, a subsidiary of grunge giant Geffen. The first of these records was meant to be an American-market version of Ejector Seat Reservation, but the price A&M set to buy back the rights proves exorbitant, and the plan soon falls through. So, having set up their own studio in Farringdon (north London), in 1998 the band and Moulder get to work on a new album of original material: 99th Dream.

Even during the recording sessions, the label shows little enthusiasm for the band's work, and unwilling to wait any longer for material that satisfied them, they terminate the contract. The band's fourth LP nevertheless manages to see the light of day.

Franklin and Hartridge themselves, however, aren't satisfied with the result, and after a tour fraught with tension and squabbles, they decide to disband the group. Soon comes the decision to sell their own studio too (bought, as it happens, by Ash), since the two band leaders disapprove of the growing drug use among the people who frequented the place.

99th Dream is indeed a rather unsuccessful record. With its arrangements simplified far more than the band had accustomed its audience to - according to Moulder, to make the new songs easier to play live - the album sounds at times listless, lacking the usual bite, the friction Swervedriver are capable of. Unlike on the third album, though, that shortfall isn't offset by top-notch songwriting, pop freshness or inspired ideas. "These Times" is a britpop track lacking the immediacy needed to win over fans of the genre, "Stellar Caprice" is a crucible of maudlin but never truly captivating spatial reverb, while "Wrong Treats" is American-style alternative rock written thoroughly on autopilot. If anything interesting lurks anywhere, it's in the guitar layers of opener "99th Dream", as well as in the cascading effects of the following "Up From The Sea".

The most interesting moment on the record, however, is its closer. A good seven minutes titled "Behind The Scenes Of The Sound And The Times" starts out like one of the band's high-speed rampages, but with Franklin's vocals particularly ragged and weary, and a finale that floats off into the Milky Way.

Starting in 1999, for nine long years, during which Franklin pursued a varied solo career and Hartridge worked instead as an agent for other artists, the Oxford band showed no signs of life.

2008 - today: from the live reunion to the new studio albums

Well before more illustrious shoegaze bands like Slowdive or Ride got back together, and thus before strapping shoes to pedals on stages the world over came back into fashion as it did in the last decade, in 2008, at Coachella in Indio, California, the shy, curly-haired Hartridge and Franklin - whose long dreadlocks from his younger days were by then a distant memory - unexpectedly reunited their band. A substantial homeland tour followed, with triumphant dates in London and Glasgow.

At the same time as the tour, Sony BMG bought the rights to the band's first three albums and reissued them in lavish remastered, expanded editions, featuring numerous tracks drawn from the various EPs that had come out between the full-lengths. It would, however, take a full six years before the band finally decided, in 2014, to set foot in the studio to record new material.

Released in 2015 on Cherry Red Records, I Wasn't Born To Lose You is a fine way to relive that golden era of rock music, because Swervedriver haven't lost their skill as songwriters, and in the meantime they've brought to the fore those sturdy Husker Du- and Dinosaur Jr.-style nuances that had, even back then, been the real reason behind all that intense devotion.

Freeing the psychedelic echoes and pop sensibility of the Byrds from the fog, the Oxford band resets its stylistic profile, breaking free of the shoegaze revival while retaining the hypnotic allure of its sonic progressions. But what really astonishes is the sheer command Swervedriver display across the album's ten tracks. The contrast between Jimmy Hartridge's scorching acid-noise style and Adam Franklin's more dreamy, dark-hued approach remains the crux of their music: an alchemy that renews itself without losing its shine.

I Wasn't Born To Lose You is a succession of delicious, almost romantic melodies, ready to combust on contact with the air, a torrential cascade of rock and pop chords ready to leave the past behind and plunge into a blazing lyrical fury.

Having re-established its basic coordinates with "Autodidact", the English group's new project avoids the torpor of automatic repeat, with tracks rich in harmonic variables ("Last Rites"), forays into classic rock'n'roll ("Red Queen Arms Race"), and melodies that, if they weren't so intoxicated with noise-fury ("For A Day Like Tomorrow"), could pass for offspring of Pink Floyd's "Animals".

Cohesive and full-bodied, Swervedriver's return is packed with moments that carry forward a renewed feeling: "Everso" retraces the glories of their past with melodies that have both the sunniness of California and the greyness of London, "English Subtitles" puts minimalism at the heart of a sonic progression that seems to grow endlessly before colliding with silence, and "I Wonder?" condenses enough riffs and sounds to single-handedly carry an entire album by neo-revivalist bands.

For a band that seemed to have ended its career for lack of inspiration, I Wasn't Born To Lose You represents an artistic rebirth and vindication: even when the reins loosen on the more straightforward "Setting Sun", or when britpop surfaces through the ever-green weave of Franklin's and Hartridge's two guitars, an emotional and creative intensity that doesn't belong only to the past remains plain to see.

Four years later, in 2019, came the less inspired but still respectable Future Ruins. This time, though, no feet hanging out the window of a car speeding down some Central American route — instead, shrouded in grey, the giant remains of an amusement park.

Future Ruins, as the title of track three and of the album itself puts it, is our present. The present of a society, or rather a humanity, that becomes obsolete ever faster, the ghost of itself while still alive. With premises like these, the dominant mood could only be melancholy, as ever translated by the Oxfordians into feedback-draped guitar workouts and searing melodies.

It's indeed an intriguing concept behind Swervedriver's sixth album, or at least behind Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge (the only survivors of the band's original core), one that would have deserved a few more flashes of genius and a few more memorable tracks. Instead they're reduced to three or four, if we generously count the muscular "Spiked Flower" among them.

Emblematic of the whole operation is the single "Mary Winter", 5 delightful minutes of melody and muscular riffing that whirl together the thoughts of an astronaut lost in space remembering real life. Dusty and desolate, with a melody dictated by a toy keyboard and radio interference here and there, "Everybody's Going Somewhere & No-One's Going Anywhere" (which perfectly conveys the lack of direction and disorientation of its title) truly gives the sense of wandering lost among futuristic ruins — practically the shoegaze version of Tomorrow's Harvest by Boards Of Canada.

It's a shame that, amid the same ruins, an excessively long "Radio-Silent" lets boredom take over from unease, closing the album on a note devoid of inspiration. It's a problem that also afflicts some of the livelier tracks, like "Golden Remedies" and "Theeascending", which, while pleasant, come across as a bit formulaic.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro ("Wasn't Born To Lose You")

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